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Welcome to issue #20 of Tape Op.

There's another wide variety of features this time around, and I hope you dig it. What have we been up to? Glad you asked. Besides the usual work at my own studio, I had the pleasure of tracking a song for The Black Heart Procession over at Portland's Type Foundry studio (Jackpot! was booked!) which was a great experience. On September 10th I was on a panel for NARAS (you know, the Academy/the Grammy people?) during a Northwest Studio Summit. It was a blast trading insights with Paul Speer (Rainstorm), Joe Hadlock (Bear Creek), Terry Date (mega-producer), Martin Feveyear (Jupiter), Ron Vermulean (The Warehouse) and Steve Albini (Electrical Audio/guest speaker). I get the feeling that Albini and I got the most wisecracks in. I also felt like the junior representative. It was great to talk shop with everyone there, enjoy the BBQ dinner and spend the day in the beautiful countryside at Bear Creek Studios. A few weeks later, John went down to the AES convention in LA. From what I heard he and Geoff Daking did a bunch of socializing and even got to have dinner with Walter Sears and ride around in EveAnna Manley's sports car with some guy named only Razor. I missed out (I promise to be there next year in NY) because I had committed to moderating a panel at North By Northwest (NXNW), the Portland music conference. This panel was fun too, with Barbara Manning (songwriter supreme), Craig Schumacher (WaveLab), Tony Lash (producer supreme) and Luther Russell (producer, musician, etc.). We talked about recording on a budget and could have gone on for several more hours. The only problem was getting there by 10 AM! Craig and I went to a lot of parties and shows, knocking back beers and enjoying Dead Moon, The Walkabouts, John Vanderslice and many others. One long weekend. I even played guitar with Franklin Bruno on one song during his set! Anyway, now it's time to get back into the studio — we just installed a power conditioner and soon are rewiring the whole control room, putting down new carpet, etc. I'll let you know how that goes... Thanks and enjoy this issue!

Deep in the industrial wasteland of Red Hook, Brooklyn, Adam Lasus has turned an old firehouse into a recording outpost called Fireproof Recording. With the pole still intact, the firehouse proves an...

Your ears are analog devices that convert sound waves into mechanical pulses the brain can understand. Your computer is a binary device, which means that it can only understand messages described in...

Many of the new large diaphragm condenser microphones coming out lately make the claim that their mic sounds just like a Neumann U-67 or U-87. Sadly though, none that I have tried even come close. The...

When I first started Tape Op I wanted to only talk about inexpensive gear (PZMs!) and records that were done on small budgets. Now I find myself stretching out a bit - my 8-track studio is long behind...

This is the first time it's happened. As I was packing up the loaner 4047 to send back to Audio- Technica I got kinda sad. I'd been using this $500 beauty on everything - guitar amps, vocals, drums -...

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